Violence against elected officials is not compatible with democracy. To those cheering at this act of violence: you are as violent and authoritarian as the people you loathe. Shame on you.

I have described a system that would have prevented the problem in the first place while still providing the actuarial benefits of pooling resources.

I am not offering a solution for how to transition from the current system where the young pay for the old.

What I don’t like is the hyper-neoliberal approach where each person lives in an island and resources aren’t pooled at all, because it benefits the rich at the cost of the poor.

Why would you assume that the fund would be kept in cash? That’s not how pension funds work.

What if we created one pension fund each year? Every person born that year contributes into that fund during their working years and withdraw from it in retirement. It seems like a solution that is fair to everybody, avoiding inter-generational wealth transfers.

Okay, people will rip the holy book of the week instead. You may not have a good reason to do it, but others should be free to do so.

I do not approve of burning holy books, but I think it should be legal.

What people shouldn’t do and what should be banned are different things. I don’t want to live in a place where what is not mandatory is banned. There has to be some room for freedom of expression, even for people expressing ideas we dislike.

Burning a symbol to upset people is a shitty thing to do, but it should not be illegal.

Assaulting people, whether they burned a symbol you like or not, is a shitty thing to do that should remain illegal.

And yes, some people in my country have burned symbols that represent people like me recently. Nobody from my community assaulted the people who did it in response. Just the way it should be.

Anyone found to have recently obtained Russian citizenship but who hadn’t registered with the local conscription office was reportedly either issued with draft notices on the spot or taken to the military authorities directly.

Is it really anyone, or does conscription only apply to men, as per usual? This double standard is so prevalent that it’s not even reported accurately.

I’m all for letting people wear whatever they want. What is the harm?

Here in Canada I’ve seen police officers wearing turbans. Works for me. Nude beaches? Sure thing. I’ve seen people in my neighborhood wearing Saudi-style niqabs and Afghan-style burqas.

Who am I to tell people what they should or shouldn’t wear? How could it be my business?

I’m also for people burning the Qur’an if they so please. Or the bible, or the rainbow flag, or the national flag if that’s how they want to protest. Ideas are there to be challenged.

I draw the line at threatening or harming people.

“The bill will make it punishable, for example, for people of the same sex to kiss in public. It will only aim at actions in a public place or with the intention of spreading in a wider circle,” Hummelgaard said

I agree with Hummelgaard. Those “protests” are used to create hatred. Even though it is also for me not comprehensible how people can be so sensitive about this, we all know the reaction it provokes. And even though we don’t agree and comprehend those feelings, we can still respect those feelings and just not senselessly create disruption. And hey… You can still kiss as many people of the same sex in private as you want.

This isn’t an exaggeration: a few weeks ago in Ottawa we had anti-LGBT protests where rainbow flags were burned down – guess who was there? And while many of us were offended and appalled, nobody was threatened or beheaded in response, and we didn’t have politicians trying to pass a new law forbidding the burning of rainbow flags either.

The whole point of this is that in Europe we have fought for centuries in order to establish liberal democracies where freedom of speech and the separation of church and state are enshrined. We must not appease extremists who achieve change with threats of violence. There is a name for that.

In a democracy the act of burning a book, or a flag, is a canary in the coal mine: you know there is trouble when it dies.

The message is simple: we don’t threaten people who have different ideas.

Governments should not be allowed to burn books.

Private citizens should be allowed to burn any books they own.

Neither governments nor private citizens should be allowed to harm or threaten people who burn their own damn books.

Example: you can purchase a dozen copies of “On The Origin of Species”, burn them, and I will very happily not threaten to behead you. Easy.